


Skywalker

by em_gnat



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Force-Sensitive Shmi Skywalker, Gen, Young Shmi Skywalker, all your favs are Ace, tfw you immaculately conceive a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-30 16:52:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12657561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_gnat/pseuds/em_gnat
Summary: Everyone called her Shmi. But Skywalker was what her mother called her.





	1. Chapter 1

**1.**

 

In the morning, before the dual suns rose over the dunes, she would scrape herself up off her cot, shake the sand from her crannies, and brush her hair back. Small fingers, used to tricky work, knotted the dry strands into a thick braid. Then, she would go to beg for breakfast.

Not at the primary kitchens, mind you, where the cooks labored all day on Gardulla the Hutt’s extravagant meals, but the slave-kitchen, where a sharp-eyed Ithorian rationed out the slave’s meals. When she returned to their shelter, her mother would still be asleep, curled on her side beneath a felt blanket that was still crusted with sand from last night’s storm. She would check the stove for scorpions, holding a wooden spoon like a mallet, and only when she was satisfied none would leap out did she start up the stove-top and begin cooking. She worked quietly, allowing the smell of food--not the sound of pots and pans--to wake her mother.

Ama would rise, weathered by the sun, scarred and muscular from pushing the turbine wheel that ventilated Gardulla’s complex. Mother and daughter would sit together cross-legged in perfect silence, and share their breakfast. Then, Ama would wrap herself up and go out to start her day.

 

The slave-handler called her _Shmi_ , which meant ‘girl’ in a subland dialect of Bocce.

Her mother did not call her that.

But everywhere she went, people barked and quipped at her:

_“Shmi, take this to the yard.”_

_“Shmi, come here and wipe this down.”_

_“Shmi, take this to the midden.”_

_“Shmi, you’d better move it!”_

_“Shmi, Shmi!”_

She scrubbed the blood of guests and gladiators off the hall floors, or dumped buckets of slop in the pit in the back, or cleaned up the putrid cages in the menagerie. Whatever work that needed to be done, cleaning or dumping, was given to her small hands.

And all day, Ama pushed the wheel round and round, sending hot air running down the long underground pipes to cool as it reached the vents of the villa. A sweet breeze whisked through Gardulla’s estate, and whenever it ruffled the hairs that escaped Shmi’s braid, she knew it was her Ama who did it. Her Ama made these halls breathe.

Ama had once been a valued handmaiden of Gardulla’s, but a stray shot from a blaster had blinded Ama in one eye and left a burn scar that covered the right side of her face. She was declared too ugly to serve inside anymore. Shmi did not think her mother was ugly. She simply looked like her mother always did: square of feature, leathery-tan from the sun, broad shoulders, muscular arms. Hair like bleached wires. A red, shiny raised scar that wrapped down from her temple to her cheek. She was quiet almost always, but sometimes she sang.

There was a time when Ama had been asked to sing before audiences at Gardulla’s command. Now, the only one who listened to her sing was Shmi.

After suns-set, when Shmi was dismissed from her duties for the day, she would walk the path toward the wheel house and meet her mother between the dunes. Together, they traveled the mile back to the slave shanties together; Ama exhausted, yet singing sandy-soft under her breath. Shmi would dance along the top of the dunes, against the dark sparkling blue of the night sky, her arms spread wide like the wings of a starfighter. She would spin ‘round and ‘round, and sometimes if Shmi tilted her head back and looked only at the stars, she imagined she was soaring up there among them.

“Look how you fly, my _little Skywalker_ ,” Ama would say in her sandy-soft voice, smiling from her mouth to her eyes as she enfolded Shmi in her freckled arms.

Everyone called her Shmi.

But _Skywalker_ was what her mother called her.

 

There were particular moments from her youngling days that Shmi recalled with absolute clarity. Though many of those days of drudgery ran together, one upon another, instances like stars glowing in the night sky surfaced in her mind amid the darkness of her servitude.

Ama’s singing was one of them.

Even when her mother was not near, Shmi could hear her singing, somewhere in the back of her mind. It whispered through her days of drudgery. At night, even when Ama slept, Shmi heard her song when she looked up at the sky. Sometimes she would hear it when she looked at a stranger in a crowd while running errands in Mos Espa. Sometimes, she would hear it right before a sand storm.

She heard it that day, standing in the back doorway of the slave-kitchens, while the cooks muttered about the color of the sky.

The house steward was at his worst, shrilling at the twi’lek dancing girls and striking any of the house slaves that were unfortunate enough to walk within his reach.

Shmi was assigned to the kitchen staff that day, and thus only saw the proof of the steward’s cruel hand when one or another of the slaves came into the kitchen with a split lip or a bruised cheek.

“He acts like we made the weather turn bad on purpose just to ruin his stupid feast.”

“It’s not even _his_ feast. It’s Gardulla’s.”

“I feel sorry for the steward.”

“Well, _I_ don’t feel sorry for him.”

“His head will be hanging from the rafters if it’s all ruined. We’re all better off out here, in the back of the house.”

“Better off, huh? I still wish I was in there with the iced drinks and the cool air.”

“I wish you were, too. You stink like the menagerie midden.”

Shmi tried to smile while listening to them, but she heard something, low and uncomfortable, and she only heard it when she looked out the windows at the off-color sky.

“What is it, Shmi?”

She turned to see the other kitchen workers motionlessly staring at her.

“Oh, it’s-” She fumbled for the words. She was not over-used to talking. Listening, she was good at. Talking was another thing, and it was _particularly difficult_ to find words when a great number of people were looking at her. It was one of the reasons the slave-handler thought her simple-minded.

“It’s just--the sky,” she said.

“A sandstorm for sure.”

“A strong one. I hear--” She noted the way the other slaves exchanged looks.

Carefully, one prompted, “What do you hear?”

Shmi closed her eyes and listened. The sound came from far away, a dull susurration, like the hems of a thousand robes brushing over the tops of dunes. As she focused, the sound grew louder, until a cold dread shocked through her bones, shaking her as the storm gales shook the banners on the rooftops. From above came a loud _snap_ , and someone cried out as a big decorative banner came crashing down into the yard outside.

Shmi’s eyes snapped open to see slaves and servants racing for cover as a solid wall of sand surged toward the property.

“Close the door! _Close it_!”

Hands snatched Shmi back as the door slammed shut an inch from her nose. The kitchen exploded with activity: the cook screaming to bar the windows and close the chimney hatch, beings leaping over tables to pull levers and hit buttons. Shmi helped wrestle one of the storm coverings closed over the remaining kitchen window just as the full force of the storm struck the estate. All around them, the walls shuddered.

Shmi had been through many sandstorms in her short life. In 12 cycles, she had been through too many to count. Storms were a part of daily living on Tatooine but this was nothing like the afternoon hazes or late night showers she was used to.

Sand whipped up under the door, and the fires on the hearth went out as they were doused in the sand that poured down between the cracks in the storm vents. Outside, roof tiles skittered free and shattered across the yards, peppering everything in their path with shards.  

Crouched beneath the kitchen tables, Shmi and the kitchen staff sat in silence as the wind roared outside, accompanied by the low, frantic roaring of some caged menagerie beast.

All at once, Shmi felt a pang in her chest, and instantly the image of her mother sprang to mind.

The wheelhouse where Ama toiled all day was little more than a shack with thin, unstable walls. Ama only had cheese-cloth to wrap around her face and shoulders, and if she tried to make it back to the compound in the storm, she’d certainly lose her way.

The back door rattled violently and despite the bolt holding it closed, sand shot through the cracks and whipped across the floor. Yet the pang came again, insistant. Shmi crawled out from under the table and stood.

“What are you doing?” A dark-purple twi’lek girl snagged the hem of her skirt. Shmi glance down to see three familiar faces, huddled close together: Toor, Skotti and Broha. They were all her age. She considered them friends.

“My mother is out at the wheel house.”

“Shmi, you can’t go out there!” Toor cried.

A wordless feeling, not fear but heavier, settled in her gut. She looked at the door, squared her shoulders.

“Don’t you dare open that door!” hissed Skotti.

Shmi threw the bolt open and leapt out of the way as the door slammed open. A roar of stinging wind surged over her.

“Stop!” The cook boomed.

“Don't go! Don't go!” she heard Toor wailing. “You’ll die!”

She threw her arm over her face, and  flung herself into the malestrom.

The air was hot and burning, searing her nose and eyes until they ran with snot and tears. She moved with one hand stretched outward, half blinded by her own hair. Her braid came unraveled and her own garments became sails that the gale used to drag her left and right.

A cord of flapping banners whipped past her leg, cracking against the side of the old vaporator fountain. Had it struck her calf, it would have carved her down to the bone.

She stumbled down onto the ground beside the fountain’s ledge, gripping the plastoid. Above her, the silhouette of the vaporator tower hovered like a ghost on the churning air.

She knew where she was now.

Shoving herself to her feet she ran west, letting muscle memory propel her past the slaves sheds and toward the path to the wheelhouse.

The slave’s alley was a death trap. Sheet-metal roofs peeled away from brittle walls and flew off into the sky. Entire sheds had collapsed and the rubble was flying through the air, peppering the remaining walls with shrapnel. Shmi steeled herself, and ran.

Something slashed the back of her arm. A chunk of what looked like a stove-top coil whipped past her head, tearing out a chunk of her hair. She dodged: leapt over what looked like a rusty, half-repaired junk speeder, sidestepped a metal rod that went cartwheeling past her, and ducked just in time to avoid a slap to the face by what looked like a pink stuffed tooki doll.

Then something flat slammed hard into her back.

Shmi fell to her knees, choking on the hot sand that rushed into her mouth. She curled into a ball, pulling the collar of her dress up and over her face.

She _had_ to get to to the wheelhouse. Ama was depending on her.

She tried to calm herself, searching for the fierce purpose that drove her out the kitchen door and into the storm in the first place. It was there, just beneath the roar of the wind: Ama’s song. She breathed in, trying to be as quiet as possible so that she could hear it clearly. Slowly, the sound of the storm faded.

Daring to open her eyes, she swiped the crust from her lashes. Around her, a perfect corridor of still air had formed. Beyond that, the storm winds still moved in a slow circle, the noise of its carnage muffled. It was like standing in the center of the whirlwind.

Carefully, she rose to her feet.

For a moment, she could only stare in confusion. Then cautiously, she raised her hand and walked toward the edge of the circle of sand. The wall of whirling wind fell back before her outstretched fingers.

She didn’t understand, but she _didn’t need to_.

Shmi plunged forward, and the storm parted before her so that she could see the path.

She raced the familiar track between the dunes, until the path was no longer familiar at all. The storm had blown a dune across the way, and where the wheelhouse was supposed to be, there was nothing but a slat of board sticking straight up out of the sand. It was the one remaining wall of the wheelhouse.

Shmi clamored around it, wading through the knee-high drifts of sand. There on the other side, was the great wheel that her mother pushed all day, sitting out on the barren hill.

She almost called for her mother.

The word welled up within her, but remained trapped somewhere just above her heart. She had to remind herself to breath around it, not to choke on it.

A knowing feeling settled over her as she walked toward the wheel. There, Shmi found her mother slumped against its side, her powerful arms limp and her head tilted back. Sand filled in the hollows of her eyes and mouth, the folds of her tunic and pants, and piled up around her legs to cement her in place.

Shmi sank down beside her, her gaze locked on the ghostly face etched out of the dust. No breath, no spark of life stirred in her mother, yet the hand that Shmi took in her own was still warm and limp, not like that of a corpse. She almost spoke, but there was no reason. No word from her would rouse Ama from her sleep.

Using the edge of her sleeve, she gently brushed the sand away from her mother’s eyes and lips, until she saw the face she remembered: the puckered, red scar that had been deemed too ugly to be seen.

The ache in her was deeper than any pain she had ever felt. Shmi had no words for it, only Ama. _Ama._ She might have wept, but the wind had dried out her eyes and stolen her tears.

Instead, she leaned forward and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder like she used to do when she was much smaller. She lay there, holding Ama’s still hand in both of her own, safe in a perfect pillar of still air, until the walls of sand dropped away and she could once more see the blue sky.

Only then did she rise and follow the path back to the compound. This time, though, she walked the path alone. The world was perfectly silent, yet she could almost hear the soft notes of Ama’s song, singing her on her way.

 

The days went on after that as if nothing had changed. For Gardulla and the rest of the household, perhaps nothing had. The slaves were at work for months afterward, rebuilding not only their own shanties, which had been eradicated by the storm, but repairing the villa itself. It was the strongest sandstorm in recent memory and its effects had been felt all the way in Mos Eisley.

Toor, Skotti and Broha did not speak of Ama’s death. In fact, none of Shmi’s fellows did. The wheel house was rebuilt with slightly stronger walls, and another slave sent out to work it all day. It seemed that no one remember the woman named Ama except the girl who had called her mother.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She had another memory of being 13 cycles old. It was only a year after her mother had died.

Shmi was sent to deliver a message to one of the beast handlers in the menagerie, and a favored guest of Gardulla’s was on tour in the yard, looking over the cages of stalking, screeching beasts. Shmi was used to skipping out of the way of claws and barbed tails but that day, she should have been on the look-out for Gardulla’s guest.

A Narglatch, recently smuggled from Naboo and doing poorly in the heat, was feeling particularly irritable that day. It swiped at her as she passed it’s cage and when she ducked out of the way, she tripped right over the guest’s boots.

When she looked up, the air had gone silent. Not even the narglatch snarled, and all she could see was the dark silhouette of the insulted guest, stamped over one of Tatooine's blazing suns.

Shmi tried to scramble to her feet-- _too late._

The guest shrilled at her in a language she didn’t know and picked her up by the front of her tunic with one spiney fist. He held her aloft, at level with his long-snouted face, just long enough for her to see that he was Trandoshan.

Then she was sailing through the air.

She seemed to fall forever, out of the sunlight, into the darkness, and then she hit the ground so hard the air died in her lungs.

For a moment, she forgot how to breathe and lay with her left right arm bent under her, the back of her head growing sticky and wet. Light glowed distantly above her, growing dimmer and dimmer. She tried to turn her head, tried to move her arms and legs, but the darkness was coming down on her. It seemed like the greatest gift in the world, that darkness.

She remembered to breathe.

A thin film of sand went up her nose and she coughed weakly. Everything was coming back into focus: the bars above, the rough stone walls around her. She was in one of the underground pens for the animals that could not abide the sunlight. From above, she heard the sound of unmistakable laughter (no need to translate), and with that the sound of someone shouting furiously in Huttese.

She also heard--no, _felt_ \-- the sound of something large moving behind her, and rolled  onto her knees.

It moved through the shade, lumbering along on massive arms. It’s fists were the size of boulders, and it’s face was a dimpled ruin. It had no lips, only teeth, teeth and more teeth, and it’s tiny black eyes glittered at her from the shadows where it paced.

Her right arm _hurt_ and hung limp at her side, not sitting quite right on her. Some impulse caused her to grab at it, to push it back where it should be.

_Pain_ , worse than the fall.

Shmi cried out as her shoulder popped back into place, and the rancor bellowed in rage. It lunged forward like a rockslide and the ground shook. Shmi stumbled back against the wall as it came at her, but the oddest sense of calm fell over her. Rather than fear she felt--

_\--Tired._

Immeasurably tired.

She knew she should be afraid. Gardulla was said to bait her rancor with live feed--particularly houseguests who had wronged her in some way. There were stories of gamblers unable to pay their debts lowered down through the bars kicking and screaming, only to be torn in half and eaten alive.

But why was it that all she could think of was how _right_ it seemed? An end, _finally_ , and then maybe she could go to that place--where ever it was--where Ama had gone when she died: A place filled with the sound of Ama singing, cool and calm like the night sky...

And the rancor stopped charging. It’s massive fists slammed into the ground on either side of her, hemming her in, yet the creature did not strike. As Shmi gazed calmly up at it, the rancor leaned down and sniffed at her with it’s slitted nostrils. Breath moved in and out of it in a fetid wind, blowing her hair back from her face with a snort.  

Above, both the shouts of alarm and the jeers had gone silent. The rancor blinked its tiny black eyes at her. In them, Shmi saw flecks of light, glittering like stars. The rancor made a burbling sound like slop boiling over into a kitchen fire and turned away. It lurched back into the shadows, issuing a long, low whine as it went.

Shmi pushed herself up against the wall, standing straighter than she had a moment before. It was like the sandstorm all over again. She remembered the way the winds had calmed and parted...and she didn’t know why.

“Shmi, up here! Shmi!”

Soft voices, calling frantically. She blinked upward and saw Broha, Skotti and Toor reaching down for her through the bars of the enclosure.

Scrambling up the rough walls like a rock lizard, Shmi found nooks and crannies that her toes and fingers could easily fit into and climbed until she was close enough for the girls to grab her by her sleeves and haul her up between the bars.

Shmi blinked against the glare of suns-shine, as if she had been down in the cage for days and not merely a handful of minutes. Her friends patted her disheveled hair and peered into her face searchingly, but Shmi was glancing around the yard. The Trandoshan that had thrown her in the cage was gone.

“We thought you were dead for sure,” whispered Broha, pulling Shmi up to stand on her feet.

“What did you do to it?” asked Toor.

“I didn't do anything,” Shmi said.

She watched the three of them exchange a dubious glance, the tip of one of Toor’s purple lekku curling in confusion. Broha and Skotti’s human expressions were just as easy to read. When the three of them looked back at her, it was as if a blast-shield had come down between them. It was then that Shmi realized, for the first time, that her friends thought something was _wrong_ with her.

Perhaps there _was_.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**.

 

The days fell in rows, one after the other: nothing remarkable, nothing out of the ordinary.

Shmi’s hair grew longer. She grew taller. She grew breasts but she didn’t think about them much. Once a month, she bled, and she didn’t think about that much either.

The house-staff unanimously agreed she was _ugly_ to look at, and because she had no exceptional skill that caught anyone’s attention, life did not change very much for her over the years. She hauled buckets and scrubbed the floors, took messages from the house to the kitchen and endured zaps from the cook’s electro-prod to inspire and speed her.

Gardulla lost the rancor in a gamble when Shmi was 16 cycles old. Shmi saw them herd the beast into a large durasteel transportation crate. Two beings died trying to get it in there. As the container was hauled away, Shmi thought she saw its tiny black eyes watching her from the ventilation slits high up on container walls.  Her heart ached, and she did not know why. The beast roared, and she thought she might cry.

She passed her eighteenth year. Then her nineteenth. Then her twentieth.  Skotti joked that she should stop counting.

Master Kaskuu, the Rodian slave-handler who had named her Shmi, was going blind and needed to hire an aide to assist in reading and record keeping. There were apparently a myriad of purchases that needed to be recorded, not just of living beings that Gardulla kept on the estate, but apparently in outlying regions, and even in the galaxy beyond.

“It’s a pity you can’t read, Shmi,”  the old Rodian chortled. “It’s easier to keep a slave than an employee.”

She could speak five languages now (Basic, Bocce, Toydarian, Huttese, and Rodian) but could read only what she sussed out by staring at notes for long periods of time.

“You could teach me to read and write,” she said, struggling not to sound too eager. “I could learn.”

The Rodian’s laugh was a series of sharp, blaring honks.

“That’s a perfectly good way to ruin a slave,” Kaskuu said. “Now, take this list to Fergal or I’ll zap you for laziness.”

In the end, the slave-handler hired an off-worlder, a Pantoran. Shmi was certain she’d never seen a Pantoran before.

It was in those days that she began to realize that her world, the world of a slave bound to Gardulla’s estate, was a small one. There was a greater world outside the compound, and not just in the far-flung stations that dotted Tatooine. There was a galaxy beyond Gardulla, where she was not an immense, omnipotent being who presided over all with a feathered fan and an iron fist. Out there, she was considered a small player in a larger game. The loss of the rancor was one thing, but then the assassins began to appear.

A bounty hunter infiltrated the compound and killed six of Gardulla’s house guards before he was subdued. In the end, it was a musician who did it. A twi’lek woman had taken the bounty hunter by surprise and struck him with her instrument.

Shmi didn't see the confrontation. She was not pretty enough to serve in the salon as Ama had in her youth--but she heard about it afterward, as she scrubbed soot off the floor and washed the soiled carpets.

After that, an expensive private body-guard was brought to the estate.

“A Kage Warrior,” Skotti said imperiously, her mouth forming a little wicked smile as she said it.

“What’s a Kage Warrior?” Toor asked, unimpressed.

Shmi had wondered the same thing.

It was just the three of them now: Shmi, Toor and Skotti. They lost Broha when one of the house stewards had declared her pretty enough to serve drinks in Gardulla’s salon. Occasionally, Shmi would see her down the length of a hall, or standing in a crowd of laughing guests, but Broha never looked at her and no one ever talked about her anymore.

“Well, it’s right in the name.” Skotti’s nostrils flared. She was cutting out a piece of the rug that had been badly burned by blaster fire. “A warrior, of course. And Kage, that’s where he’s from.”

“An off-worlder then?”

“ _Of course_. You can’t find anyone better around here, and Gardulla wants the best.”

“But where,” Toor’s lekku curled into knots of confusion. “Where exactly _is_ the planet Kage?”

The silence went on forever, until someone came along to dump another burnt rug into their laps.

“Kage isn't _a place_ ,” one of the beast-feeders told Shmi later. He was a miserable Quaran, and his chapped face tentacles warbled as he spoke. “Kage is the name of the people.The planet is called Quarzite.”

“How do you know this?” Shmi asked, amazed.

“Because I’m not some stupid slave girl,” He told her. “Now leave alone before I feed you to the rathtar.”

The truth was, that Shmi was not the only one who was interested in the off-world body-guard. The day his arrival was awaited with all the anticipation of one of Gardulla’s salon days, but instead of a bevy of guest appearing from far and wide with their exotic entourages, it was only one being. Just one. And he had no entourage.

Shmi heard about his arrival later, from the excited kitchen staff.

_“He’s so tall!”_

_“He’s too skinny.”_

_“I thought he would be...more...I dont know…”_

_“He’s so regal!”_

_“He looks like a stove-scorpion.”_

_“His eyes are…”_

_“His eyes, did you see?”_

“Unnerving.”

_“Lovely._

_“Worth every credit she’s paying for_ him.”

_“He’ll be dead by the next suns-rise.”_

She wasn’t there to appraise him as he stepped out of the speeder, though. Instead, she was was greeting the slave-handler’s new aide at Pymak Station.

 

* * *

 

 

At first, Shmi thought the slave-handler was teasing her.

Her previous journeys into the the nearby station of Mos Engren were always done with a group of other girls, often with the slave-handler there to keep them on task with a nudge from an electro-prod.

Shmi, like every other slave, was aware that an attempt to escape would be foolish and fatal. Somewhere in her body was a nano-transmitter. If she ran away, the transmitter could be triggered and the resulting small explosion would maim or kill her.

Sometimes she wondered: _Was it under her arm? Was it behind her neck? Where_ was _the little monster?_

It didn't really matter _where_ it was.  What mattered was that death was certain if a slave escaped. Where would they go on this barren world anyway? A day _that way_ or _that way_ was just the same, because it was likely to be a day without water or shelter no matter what.

Then the slave-handler gave her a durasheet with a few letters of Aurebesh written on it, and ordered her to go to Pymak Station.

“Just stand there and hold the sign up, and he should come to you.” Master Kaskuu said. “Then bring him back here, _quickly_.”

She rode there in the supply speeder, holding the durasheet sign between her hands and scowling at the writing the entire time. Sweat dripped off her screw-up face and plopped onto the sign as she willed herself to understand the words. She couldn’t understand. She would _never_ understand. No one would teach her.

Her frustration was so keen that she nearly threw the durasheet out the window. When the wind almost snatched it from her hand, she gasped in dismay, and clutched it so hard against her skirt that she dented the edges. If she lost it, her task was done with before it began, and there was no telling what the slave-handler would do with her then.

The speeder jerked to a stop, and she barely caught herself before she was flung onto the floor. The Dug driver kicked open the door, muttering at her in his native tongue. Shmi didn’t understand much, but she recognized the curse words and disparaging remarks he made about her. She climbed out of the speeder behind him.

Around them, speeders of all makes and models dotted the bare dirt. Similarly, beings of all shapes, sizes and colors wandered between them, in so many forms Shmi didn’t know what some of them were. It took her a moment to realized the Dug driver was walking away from her without even waiting, and she tore her attention from the confusion of forms to follow him.

“You’d better be back here by noon.” He said over his shoulder, swaying heavily from side to side with his rolling gait. “Kaskuu may have a soft spot for you, but none of that drivel works on me, you hear?”

It was the first time Shmi had ever heard of the slave-master having a “soft spot”, let alone one regarding _her._

“If you’re not back here by noon,” the driver continued, “I’ll leave you. Then it’s -POP!” He made a gesture with his foot, like brains shooting out of the side of his head, and laughed viciously.

Then he made a sharp turn into a dark doorway. She peered in, seeing for a moment the stumbling forms of drunken dancers, dozens of voices singing a slurred and weirdly jovial rendition of “Death in the Desert”. Then the door slammed closed dangerously closed.

Shmi staggered a step back, looking up at the flickering holo-sign that hug above the door: a bantha’s horned head, with a red X where one eye should have been. A blind bantha?

She squinted at the script glowing beneath it, but didn’t recognize a single character.

Breathing out a long sigh, she turned on her heel to stare at the unfamiliar street.

Pymak Station was no bigger or more overwhelming than a busy day at the estate, and though she didn’t know her way around, it was easy enough to find the place where new visitors were greeted and taxed by Gardulla’s toll-keepers.

Shmi held the durasheet sign against her stomach, standing motionless as rusty hover-buses puttered into the station. No one flew in to Pymak Station directly. There were no star-ships parked in the lots. They had to come from somewhere else. Mos Eisley, she thought. That was a name Shmi had heard often, and she knew it was important because other people talked about it as if it was.

She waited while hover-bus after hover-bus pulled into the station and unloading their passengers beneath the awning. Shmi counted three, then five, then nine buses coming and going. The ninth one caught on fire and its back-end lurched to the ground. She watched as passengers dove out of the windows and sparks flew. The station master bugling in alarm over the loudspeaker, but the bus driver merely put the flames out with an extinguisher, clamored back into the cab, and drove the hoverbus off again, while black smoke poured out of its exhaust ports.

Shmi glanced up at the sky and saw the first sun climbing toward its noon-position.

The hoverbus station was empty.

She waited and waited, but no new bus arrived. She walked over to the ticket booth, and rapped on the metal screen that was pulled down over the counter.

A little door shot open and a single large, orange eye glared out at her.

“Pardon me,” Shmi said in Basic. “But could you tell me if there another hover-bus coming along?”

“ _Nyaaaaaaaaaar_!” The being screeched, then slammed the little door closed again in a gesture that needed no translation.

Clutching the sign like a talisman, Shmi trudged away from the hover-bus station. It was her first solo task away from the compound and she had _failed._ The slave-handler would be furious with her.. Would she be slapped, or starved, or _shocked_? Would the slave-handler even blame her, or was it possible that his new employee simply changed his mind? Who would want to come to a dust-bowl of a planet like Tatooine just to work as a secretary for a low-level thug?

As she walked back toward the cantina to meet the Dug driver, she got the eerie feeling that someone was walking just behind her, out of sight. Shmi stopped mid-stride, pretending to examine a sign she could not read. She turned her head carefully left, then right. There were beings all around, walking past on both sides,  but there was one standing in the alley between two buildings just behind her, absolutely motionless.

She didn’t dare look at the figure directly, she got an impression of the being on the periphery of her vision: a humanoid shape, not much taller than her but a little wider. Dark blue cloak.

She started forward again, careful not to rush, but she was certain now--absolutely _certain!_ \--that the cloaked figure was following her!

Should she run?

The feeling of ill-ease intensified. Ahead, she saw the cantina with its one-eyed bantha sign. She kept walking, one calm step after another, but klaxons were sounding in her mind.

_Run, Skywalker, run!_

She caught her breath, gathering herself for a dash to the door, when a hand grabbed her shoulder. She spun to face her attacker, a cry of alarm frozen in her throat, and held up the durasheet sign she could not read.

“Whoa, there!” It was a young, blue-faced Pantoran man. He had short-cropped blue-black hair and light brown eyes. His face was square and his thick, straight brows taper neatly at the ends. He wore a finely made blue cloak, far too heavy for Tatooine’s weather.

He stared  at her face in confusion, then his eyes fell on the sign she held.

“Oh, you _are_ the one!”

“I am?” Shmi asked.

“Aren’t you?”

Helplessly, she shook her head. He jabbed a finger at the sign.

“That’s my name there: Paz Meyoti You’re here from the Gardulla estate correct?”

“There you are!” The Dug driver game lumbering up behind them. “Found the blue galoot, did ye? Well, you really are bluer that a dizkarr’s danglers! _Haha!”_

Shmi’s heart twisted. Their driver was _drunk._

The Dug stomped past them, yanked open the speeder door, and began to drag himself up into the cab. The speeder rocked to and fro, and the Dug kept slipping off the side. Finally, embarrassed, Shmi hurried over to help him inside. He accepted her help, at least until he was firmly in the seat, then he wound back and shoved her as hard as he could. Paz Meyoti caught her as she stumbled.

For a tense moment, she stared up at him from where she lay in his arms. Then he stood her upright with a pained smiled. She hurried to straighten her tunic and cheese-cloth shawl, and he reached out as if to help her. then the Dug’s voice cut in:

“You better get in here, or I’m leaving you both in the dirt.”

They jumped back from one another. Without looking him in the eye again, Shmi climbed up into the back of the speeder, and Paz Meyoti followed suit.

It was a noteworthy feat that they made it back to the compound without striking a single moisture tower, though on several occasions the driver had swerved sharply, and the passengers had bumped against one another all the way there.

 

* * *

 

 

Paz Meyoti was outside of Shmi’s sphere of day-to-day existence, for though they walked the same grounds, they lived in different worlds. Sometimes she would wander past the slave-master’s office or deliver him a message, but after that first meeting, she did not see Meyoti often. Sometimes, she would spy him walking down the halls, seemingly lost. When he noticed her, he smiled and waved. More often than not, he did not notice her. It was as if he was studying the decorations on the walls, locking their beauty away in his memory.

She saw the slave-master less than she used to as well, and struggled to swallow an uneasy feeling of resentment. Shmi was not used to feeling resentment, and it brought with it feelings of guilt. Even so, she found herself thinking: she could have learned how to read and write. She _could have,_ but they had not given her the chance.

Toor and Skotti tried to pry information out of her, but she had not learned any special knowledge from her meeting with Meyoti that could not be gleaned from merely seeing the man walking down the hall. He was male. He was Pantoran. _That was all._

“He has a lovely face,” sighed Skotti.

“He has beautiful eyes,” said Toor. “Gold.”

“And fine-looking hands.”

Shmi hadn’t really noticed any of that.

“Didn’t you speak to him at all?” Skotti asked at last, exasperated with her.

Shmi paused to consider. Then at last said, “He asked my name.”

“And what did you say?” They clamored closer, bright eyed and vicious.

“I told him,” she said.

They groaned.

“Shmi,” Toor muttered. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but there is _definitely_ something wrong with you.”

At night, she lay awake on her sleeping mat, staring out the single round window of her shared hovel. If she was lucky, she could see the night sky, undisturbed by moonlight and dotted with bright, gleaming stars. She remembered how her mother sang for her when she was little, and how on nights like this she would lift her arms up and twirl around the room, dancing along with Ama’s song. The stars reminded her of the voice that had been silent for years, but on some nights, she swore she could almost hear it, coming from somewhere far off.

She knew there was something wrong with her. She just didn’t know _what_.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

 

Soon after, the dreams began.

At first, Shmi woke with a start, her heart flickering in her chest like a dying electro-light. She couldn’t remember what the dream had been about, only that it had filled her with restlessness. She would be unable to get back to sleep until she went outside and walked around the dryed-out vaporator fountain several times.

It happened once, and then twice, then a third time in one week, then not at all for nearly a month.

Then, abruptly it returned but this time she could remember images:

_Standing on the dunes at night, beneath the stars. The stars beginning to move, slowly, drifting and turning and wandering away across the sky, like the afterburners of a hundred starfighters. Some flew away, some drifted down toward her._

_She held out her arms and they poured down like water, crashing into her, filling her up, until she sparkled and flickered and rose on her tip-toes over the dunes. She floated into the night sky, and two bright white stars came down to meet her. They grew in size to take on humanoid shapes. They were men, she could see. Human men. She could almost see their facial features through the glow of their star-bright flesh. They raised swords made of light and--_

Above the vaporator courtyard, the sky was taking on a pinkish hue. It was nearly dawn. Curling her arms around herself, Shmi flexed her toes in the cool sand. It would be gone soon, chased away by the first sun’s rise, but the air had that quality that reminded her of early mornings as a child, when she woke early to prepare breakfast for Ama.

She went to her hovel to fetch her shoes, then marched off to the kitchen. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep.

“What are you doing here so early?” burbled the cook’s assistant, a sour-natured Ithorian name Ixse Groof. She narrowed her large yellow eyes at Shmi in unmasked suspicion.

Shmi would have responded, only at that very moment Ixse swiveled on her chair to look at Shmi directly and revealed a third person sitting directly behind her great bulk. Paz Meyoti sat across from the Ithorian, his milk-blue hands folded atop the table. He peered around Ixse Groof, blinking in confusion. Then, to Shmi’s surprise, he smiled and called her name.

“Shmi, isn’t it?”

“You know Shmi?” Ixse Groof asked in disbelief.

“Of course I do. Shmi, come sit here with me.” He slapped the table to indicated she should sit down, and the sound was almost too loud in the quiet space.

She hesitated, looking at Ixse. Very slowly, the cook’s assistant moved aside but she watched Shmi with withering contempt. Carefully, Shmi padded toward the table. When she pulled the stool out opposite Meyoti, it scraped harshly across the floor. Claws along durasteel. A shiver pinched her spine.

“Come now, sit down!” Meyoti insisted, his teeth glitterbright as he bared them in a smile. “I was just asking Ixse Groof about how she runs the kitchens on the compound. It’s fascinating stuff-- beyond my area of expertise! It takes so much planning, and absolutely perfect timing. Each meal is like a complicated...ah, dance. Haha, is that right? Like a dance?” His sleeves flicked and fluttered as he spoke. It was almost as if he used his hands to shape the words he spoke. “What do you think, Shmi?”

She was caught off-guard by the sound of her name. “I’m sorry. I don’t…?”

“She doesn’t think,” Ixse muttered. “She said it herself.”

“Would you mind whipping up a bite of something for me to eat?” Meyoti asked, flashing a quick smile at the Ithorian.

The question was so abrupt that it startled Ixse, just as it surprised Shmi. She shifted in her chair, prepared leave so that he could have his meal, but he patted the table again insistently.

“And a little extra, for Shmi here.”

She sunk back into the chair, staring at him blankly and he--he actually _winked_ at her.

It was the same kitchen she had served in since she was a girl, the same she came to every morning for her daily rations, yet at that moment she felt as if she had never been there before in her entire life. Everything felt unfamiliar to her, the table she ate at, the hum of the cook’s vibro-cleaver as it sliced through a ripe meiloorun, the rattle of cups filled with caf. It was equally odd to be served as well. Ixse set a plate between the two of them, and shuffled away, leaving them to snack as they talked.

“I didn't realize the palace had two kitchens but my understanding is that this is the preparation kitchen, and the other is where everything is plated and assembled for style. Lady Gardulla certainly seems to have an air for theatrics and presentation. Have you see one of her salons before?”

“No, never,” Shmi said.

“But you’ve lived here your whole life,” Meyoti sputtered in shock. “You mean to tell me you’ve never been in Gardulla’s great salon?”

“I have, but not while there are guests. I would be sent in afterward to clean.”

He looked deeply disappointed, and she had to pause and gather her thoughts. “Gardulla is very particular about the slaves she lets work in her salon,” she told him, feeling an odd knot of defensiveness beneath her gut. “Anyone serving in the hall during the salon must be beautiful and above all, exceptional in some way. Having a talent that one can put on display for the benefit of the guests, that is the most important thing, next to beauty.”

“Appearance is everything,” Paz Meyoti said rather seriously. The expression drained from his face, and Shmi was reminded of when she had first seen him in the alley in Pymak Station, with his face unreadable beneath the hood of his cloak.

“Yes.” Shmi looked down at the crescent of meiloorun cradled in the palm of her hand.

“Well, now that I’ve seen the kitchens, perhaps you’ll show me where the salon is,” Meyoti said, brightly.  When she raised her gaze, he stood up and pushed his chair.

“But the salon--”

“There’s no event going on right now. No guests, no dancing, no music. No one is awake save for you and me and Ixse here--”

“Keep me out of this,” Ixse squawked in disapproval, but there was a gleam of affection in her large eyes as she looked at Paz Meyoti

“We won't be disturbing anyone with our talentless, uninteresting selves, Shmi. I just want to see it, in all it’s splendor. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“I suppose not.” Shmi picked her way through the words thoughtfully, but he was already around the table now. He grabbed her by the arm and she immediately she went rigid, but all he did was pull her to her feet and steer her toward the door.

“The two of you had better watch yourselves,” Ixse Groof called after them. “Skulking around the halls in the early hours while the house is on alert for assassins is likely to get you a blaster bolt in the back.”

“You’re worried about us!” Meyoti laughed, and Shmi felt it travel through the bones of her arm and up to her shoulder. He still hadn’t let go of her.

“Kaskuu would throw a temper tantrum if his aide was shot full of holes when he only just hired you.”

“I’ll remind myself not to get shot full of holes then, for Mr. Kaskuu’s sake.”

Then they were out the door, striding toward the main building.

It was odd, the way he pulled her along. She felt as though she was in trouble, his grip was hard and firm, but he was all pleasant chatter and thoughtful questions. He wanted to know everything.

“So, that's the direction of the slave quarters? And that’s the menagerie...but where do you keep all the speeders? This place is a maze...”

In the hallway, he grew quiet, realizing that to annoy a house guest would be dangerous for both of them. He was an employee, but Gardulla was not beyond making an example of paid employees. Together, they tiptoes along, and Meyoti admired the fine quartz floor tiles, glittering with veins of pale red-gold, like the blood vessels on the inside of a human eye. He admired the patterns that crowned the columns and the decorative grates that covered the air vents at the top of the walls.

“Those are of Alderaanian design. And are they clari-crystalline or transparisteel?”

“I’m not certain…”Shmi replied hesitantly. “Though once, a zabrak boy knocked one off it’s hinges while dusting it and it broke. The slave-master sent him away shortly after, to work in the quarries.”

“It broke?” Meyoti snorted. “Then it’s not transparisteel. Probably just _common glass_.”

They continued onward.

“What’s down that way?”

“Those are the guest chambers, for Gardulla’s visitors.”

“And that way?”

“Those are Gardulla’s personal quarters.”

“They must be as finely decorated at these halls.”

“I think so, but I’ve never been inside her private chambers.”

At last they came to the opulent gold framed double doors that led into Gardulla’s famous salon. It was said that they belonged to a famous Bardottan temple, but that Gardulla had had them stolen, right off the temple, and smuggled back to her estate just for this purpose. They were closed, and there was no music, but jewel-eyed Bardottan statues glared down at them from the top of the door.  Meyoti let go of her arm and her steps faltered. Her hands felt like ice.

“This is it, isn't it?” He asked her, elated. He ran his hands over the large, decorative bar that held the door shut.

“I don't think we should go in,” Shmi said.

“Shmi, there is no one here. We’re not interrupting. Certainly there can’t be any harm in just taking a peek. And if someone does see us, I’ll just tell them I asked you to give me a tour. They can’t fault your obedience.”

It really wasn't so much to ask, only a peek inside of an empty room. Yet it wasn't what he asked, it was the feeling that had settled into her fingertips, that made her feel cold and heavy like a corpse, stiff as Ama’s face as she’d wiped the sand from her eyes.

The doors popped apart as Paz Meyoti lifted the red-lacquered bar. He peering into the dark gap between the doors then pushed them open.

Into darkness.

The light from the hallway fell in a long panel across the floor, pale gold electro-light from the solar-powered glow lamps. Inside, the checkered floor stretched out beyond the edges of shadow. Shmi wasn’t certain what was beyond, she could only see Meyoti ahead, walking across the path of light. She opened her mouth to call him back but her voice died. She drew a swift breath and plunged in after him.

It was just an empty room, pretty in design but without much furniture. The furniture would be brought in,she knew, depending on what the diversion of the day was: sabacc tables, cages, platforms, a stage for a play or a light show. The dance floor could be turned into an arena, where duelist fought with fists or vibroblades and bets were placed. It wasn't the _room_ that was supposed to be interesting, but the people inside it.

“How lovely.” Paz Meyoti sighed, gazing over their heads.

Shmi craned her head back to see that the ceiling above them was festooned with draping lines of glittering crystals, all shaped like teardrops of various sizes. The streamers spiraled across the ceiling, gathering into a great chandelier. It looked like the arms of a nebula, Shmi thought suddenly, and the chandelier was supposed to be it’s glowing core.

“More of those lovely Alderaanian grates,” Meyoti mused. “And that must be Gardulla’s throne.”

He moved toward the dais, out of the reach of the light from the hall. Shmi watched him pass into the dark and stand before softly glowing, jade green steps. A few tufted cushions still lay scattered across the stairs.

“Paz Meyoti,” Shmi called softly in warning. The Pantoran didn't hear his own name. He stared at the throne as if mesmerized.

Stepping to the side, Shmi noticed what he was looking at. Behind the throne, there was an open doorway, but in the dark it merely looked like a gaping black hole, it’s opening darker than any shadow in the barely lit room.

Something glittered in it’s depths.

Two perfect, yellow pinpricks of light appeared, shining steadily out of the dark. They flickered slightly, then moved a little to the side.

Eyes.

They were _eyes._

The yellow eyes blinked, and the being they belonged to slid forward out of shadow: a tall, thin shape with wide shoulders and a narrow torso. It was a humanoid, dressed all in overlapping layers of black armorweave with a ribbed chest-plate and a kilt of armoured panels. It was difficult to miss the sheathed pair of forearm-length vibroblades that hung at both of the being’s hips. The face, though--the face was something else.

There were the neon yellow eyes, with their star-shaped pupils, but the lower half of the face--Shmi was frightened. Then she realized that it wasn't actually the being’s face. It was a hardened mask that was carved and painted to give the appearance of large, insectile mandibles.

“What are you doing here?” A distorted voice crackled out of the mask.

Paz Meyoti stepped backward down the stairs, his gaze locked on the being. It advanced around the throne. Without looking at her, Meyoti threw his hand back, groping for Shmi.  He stumbled off the last step. Quickly, she ducked under his arm and caught him before he fell.

“I will ask you only once more, and you _will_ answer this time,” The being said. “What are you doing here?”

“We were only having a bit of a looky-loo, friend.” Meyoti flashed a desperate smile that was all too quickly gone. “I’m Master Kaskuu's aide. I’m new to the property and I--I just heard such tales of Gardulla’s great salon room but I knew I’d never been invited to see it so-- just wanted to look, while it wouldn't disturb anyone. I didn't mean anything by it.” He held out his hands pleadingly.

The tall being stopped at the second stair, and gazed down at them imperiously from over the edge of his mask.

“And _she_ ? What is _she_ doing here?” He pointed to Shmi.

“A slave,” Meyoti said quickly. “Just a slave.”

The neon eyes turned their full attention on her. For a moment, Shmi felt pierced, the alien intelligence slicing through her flesh to her very heart. She could not look away. It was the being that released her, turning his gaze back to Meyoti.

“Be gone,” the being said.

Meyoti and Shmi exchanged a wordless glance.

 _“Go_.”

They bolted for the hall, racing back together along the lighted path to the hall. Meyoti nearly knocked her over in his attempt to close the door. Shmi got round beside him and together they pushed the double doors closed on gardulla’s salon, and drove the bolt home.

“Who in the hell was that?” Meyoti panted, leaning up against the door.

Shmi had just opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t know, when a cold recognition gripped her.

“It was Gardulla’s new bodyguard,” she told him. “The Kage warrior.”

 

* * *

 

 

The next time Shmi brought a memo to the slave-handler’s office, Paz Meyoti was there. From where he sat at the less impressive desk in the corner of the cluttered office, he glanced up and smiled at her. She dared to give a sheepish smile back. They did not speak of the incident in the Gardulla’s salon, and though in the week that followed Shmi dreaded the inevitable call out into the yard, the electro-prod  or the lightning-lash, no reprimand ever came.

This surprised her at first because she was certain it was the Kage warrior who had caught them in the salon room. Why wouldn't he have exposed them to Gardulla? Perhaps he thought them too lowly to trouble his mistress with.

Ixse Groof never mentioned it either, and though Shmi saw her every morning, she never even gave a mean spirited tease about it. In fact, since that morning, Ixse was strangely silent toward Shmi. She gave Shmi her daily food ration every morning, but after that never called her dull-witted or bantha-eyed.

“I asked Ixse to take it easy on you,” Paz Meyoti told her one morning, while the slave-handler was busy yelling at a red-faced Corellian courier. “I hope you don’t mind.”

He put a hand on her arm when he said that, the blue against the tan of her sun-baked flesh--like sky and sand, side by side. She glanced up from the hand on her arm and into his eyes. He had yellow tattoos on his face, brackets that ran from his cheekbones to temples. She thought she understand what Toor and Skotti meant now. Paz was what the house steward would call good-looking, good enough for Gardulla to let into her salon.

“I don’t mind,” Shmi said. "It’s only that...I just don’t understand _why_.”

Paz snorted. “Why? Why _what_?”

“Why you would do something so _kind_.”

With a softly disappointed _tsk_ , he gently squeeze her arm. “Because we’re friends, aren’t we?”

 _Friends? Is that what we are?_ She opened her mouth to say it, but the slave-handler slammed his old datapad down on the desk so hard that the screen cracked. The Corellian courier sidestepped for the door, as the slave-handler began to curse in Rodian.

“Meyoti! Meyoti! It’s broken isn't is? I’ve broken it.”

Meyoti vanished from her side, his hand gone from her arm, as if he had never been there.

Shmi tiptoed out the door, leaving the slave-handler whining, his head in his hands, as Paz Meyoti cooed soothingly over the datapad.

A small cleaning droid bumped past Shmi’s foot. She stopped just before she tripped over it, and it beeped at her sharply. When she glanced up, she saw the Corellian courier standing down the hallway, speaking with a familiar tall slash of whip-thin darkness.

The Corellian was petting his handlebar moustache with his thumb and forefinger, speaking with a self-assured nod and smile.

“I’m certain I’ve seen him before--” Shmi heard the Corellian say. “How long did you say he’s been here?”

Unexpectedly, the bodyguard’s chin lifted and his head jerked toward Shmi. Those glow-bright eyes locked on her. She felt the blood drain from her face, and turned to hurry away.  She dared only a single glance back over her shoulder. When she saw the Kage warrior was still watching her, she broke into a run.

She hopped over the cleaning droid, only to have it beep at her threateningly, then ran on until she reached the cleaner’s closet. Three other slaves were already inside, and they froze where they stood by the rinsing sinks, staring at her in surprise as she slammed the door.  She turned away from their stares and hid in the corner of the room.

“What’s happening? What is it?”, they asked her, their voices like sandy wind scraping across the roof.

Shmi shook her head and remained silent until her breathing calmed again. There was no way to explain the terror in her heart.


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

  
  


_ She dreamed of stars that were men and swords of fire. _

For a long time after she woke, Shmi lay there with her hands pressed over her thundering heart.

In the dark, her hovel-mates snored and twitched. Quietly, she rose and stretched. Zarba, the lightest sleeper of the lot, stirred and muttered menacingly in her sleep. Carefully, Shmi crossed to the hovel’s only window--little more than a rag covered hole in the wall--and peered out into the night. Moonshine cast long shadows off the corners of buildings. 

She found herself merely standing, staring into nothing. Then the sound of Zarba snorting startled her. Abruptly, Shmi went to the door and let herself out.

She walked to the vaporator yard.

The night sky was velvet dark and the turbid yellow light cast by the electro-lanterns was no match for the piercing white glow of the stars above. Perhaps it was her dream that she was remembering, but tonight Shmi swore that the song of the stars was clearer than it had ever been before. It sounded like a choir singing her Ama’s star-song, and she closed her eyes to hear it better.

Without realizing it, she began to sway, following the sound with her body as she had when she was little. There was no one out at this hour to see or laugh at her for it. She twirled  in slow circles, dancing ‘round and ‘round the low wall that ringed the dry fountain. Her heart ached and she felt a sob well up in her throat.

The feeling came out of nowhere, but she realized with dawning horror that she was about to cry. She stopped dancing and clutched a hand to her throat, trying to hold the sob in.

Then she realized she was not alone.

Gardulla’s bodyguard stood on the opposite side of the courtyard, motionless as a statue in his dark armorweave, but in the darkness his odd yellow eyes glowed like lantern light. 

“Do not be afraid,” he said in that electronically distorted voice.

Shmi gasped in surprise, but the sob she’s been trying to hold in came pouring out.

He reached up with his long thin hands, and unclasped the mask from the lower half of his face.

He was less eerie when she could see all of his features. His facial proportions looked very human, for the most part, though his eyes and nose were perhaps longer and more narrow than a human’s might naturally be.  He had a matching mouth, also long narrow, and high sharp cheekbones. He was, altogether,  _ long and narrow _ . It was only the eyes that were alarming because of their color and the shape of the pupil, but otherwise, he was utterly unfrightening beneath the mask.

And yet she burst into tears.

It wasn't like her, but the more mortified she became, the more she cried; a torrent of hot, sloppy tears sloughing down her face. She covered her eyes with her hands, but could still see the Kage warrior coming toward her through the slits between  her fingers. She sidled away from him.

“You have no reason to fear me _ ,”  _ he said but he paused where he was and kept his distance. “I just heard that song you were singing...”

Shmi glanced at him in horror. “I don’t  _ sing, _ sir.” 

“You were just now. I  _ heard  _ you. That’s why I came over.”

“I wasn’t...It was…” She blotted the tears furiously from the corner of her eyes.

“You _ were. _ What was the song? What is it called?” He had a particular accent, and a low, soft voice. Because he was so much taller than her, he had to lean down so that she could hear him speak. If he had been standing only a few more steps away, she might not have heard his voice at all.

“I don’t know,” she murmured.

“Sing it then.”

She shook her head helplessly. There was no one else in the yard, just her and the bodyguard. She should not have felt so embarrassed, but she did. 

She flung up her hands in resignation. “I can’t.”

“Or you won’t?”

“No, I  _ can’t, _ ” She insisted. “I can’t remember how it went. I have to…” She slowly twirled her hands, like she did when she danced.

“Well then,” the Kage warrior took a step back, out of her way, and it looked as if-- _ no _ . He didn’t. He couldn’t have possibly... He  _ bowed  _ to her. 

“Go on, then.”

Her arms curled in against her chest involuntarily. She crossed them over herself, her hands balled into fists, and stared at the ground.  _ Go on, then.  _ It was easy to say the words, but there was no way for this stranger to understand quite what he asked her. Perhaps for him, a dance or a song came easily. Perhaps he was used to asking it of others, as Gardulla’s bodyguard. He asked her to do  _ this _ and  _ that, _ and he expected compliance, because she was a slave. He knew she was a slave. Well, if he wanted to be entertained, he had come to the wrong place. Shmi knew she was no singer, not like Ama had been, and the only one who had ever liked her dancing had been her mother.

_ My little Skywalker. _

Slowly, Shmi raised her arms. She tried out a slow spin, trying to find the star-music again. She couldn’t hear anything but her own uneven breathing. It was worse than being in the rancor’s cage. She closed her eyes and breathed out--  _ out, out, out _ \--until all the breath was gone from her. Then in. Then out again. Her face felt tight from drying tears, but she could hear it now, beyond the rush of her own blood in her ears. 

She danced, and as she did she hummed the tune that Ama had always sung.

Shmi turned like a banner in the breeze, around and around, her feet picking up speed. It was the same old dance, like the dance of the stars across the skies; cycle after cycle, one sun rising after the other, both falling, only to rise again and again and  _ again _ ….

When she opened her eyes, the bodyguard was watching  her with those neon-bright eyes. 

“Show me the steps,” he said.

And she did.

He was more graceful than her. The long limbs that were shaped for violence were also well suited for dancing. She shouldn’t have been surprised but she was. How was she to know that fighting and dancing could sometimes look a lot alike?

He learned quickly, too.  Copying her gestures, studying her with those glowing eyes. She remembered Toor saying those eyes were  _ unnerving _ . She didn’t think they were, not any longer.

At last, the pair of them sat down on the edge of the vaporator fountain. The only sound was the soft rush of a calm night breeze curling over the hovel roofs. 

“My name is Ahn-kin Dai,” he said.

“Gardulla’s bodyguard.” Shmi nodded, tucking her hands into her sleeves. 

His thin lips curved into a shadow of a  smile. “I think at this point, you’re supposed to give your name?”

When she hesitated he said, “Or not. Perhaps it’s not your custom.”

“I don’t really have any customs.” Shmi said, daring a sideways glance at him. “The slave-handler called me Shmi.”

“Where did you learn to dance then, Shmi?”

“I didn’t really learn how to dance, not like the girls in the salon do. I just... _ do it _ .”

“And did you teach yourself to sing, too?”

“Oh, I’m not much of a singer,” Shmi sighed. “My mother was once a singer in the salon. Gardulla’s favorite soloist. She had a _ beautiful  _ voice. She could sing in many languages, and the slave-handler said her Rodian accent was perfect. He would sometimes ask her to sing, just for him, after she’d been sent away from the house. He thought it was a waste to have her outside pushing a wheel when her voice was so valuable.”

“Where I am from,” Ahn-kin Dai said, ash-grey face tight, voice sparking like the edge of a vibroblade. “All women are valuable.”

“There are slaves on Quarzite?”

He flinched as if she’s flung sand in his face. He looked away so that all she could see was his profile, frozen and unreadable.

“I don’t mean valuable as in a sum of credits,” he said at last, speaking slowly and with great care. “Where I’m from, women are valuable beyond riches. A Kage woman is like the hub at the center of a wheel. They are the heart of a family. Respected. Great matrons may have up to twelve husbands. They may have thrice that many children. They forge alliances, make matches, unite clans...they are very powerful. But rare.”

“Rare?”

“There more Kage males than females.  _ Many more. _ And every family seeks a girl-child to lead their clan into the future. United around her, the family remains strong. It is one of the reasons why women do not become warriors. There are many males, but the loss of even one female is devastating to a family.”

“If you were to die protecting Gardulla from one of her assassins would you not be missed, then?”

“I’d be a poor bodyguard if I died so easily. And yes, I would certainly be missed.”

Shmi could see in his posture, in the way he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, that he wanted to say more. She did not press him, but merely waited. If she was good at nothing else, she was at least good at waiting.

“I am the youngest child of ten. My father is a renowned warrior and a great trainer of warriors. He trained me as well. It would be disrespectful of me to die when he has given me all his training.”  

Then he smiled, but it was sad and quiet, etched with the silent sort of suffering she saw in the faces of many who served in Gardulla’s palace.

“It was a pleasure to dance with you, Shmi,” Ahn-kin said. 

And then he stood and walked away.

“My mother called me Skywalker,” she said to his back, but she was not certain he heard her.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“He was out here,” Skotti whispered. “Asking about you.”

Shmi stopped, her hands frozen on the bucket she was in the process of filling with cleaning solution. Frozen, bent over, she twisted the spigot off, and slowly straightened, holding the bucket across her knees as if it could shield her.

“Who do you mean?”

“Paz Meyoti, of course,” Skotti sneered.

It wasn't what she had expected to hear, and Shmi was more baffled than relieved.

_ “Why? _ ”

“Why _ indeed _ !” Skotti snorted, flicking her hand dismissively. Her gaze returned to Shmi but it was distant and calculating. She was looking Shmi up and down, appraisingly, like the slave-handler might look at a new acquisition.

“He asked that I give you a message.” She straightened up primly. “You are to go to Master Kaskuu's office. Immediately.”

“But there’s a spill in the Ivory Hallway.” Shmi blinked down at the iridescent cleaning solution sloshing around in the bucket. “Would you help me?”

“I have something else to see to. I guess you’ll just have to hurry then.” Skotti gave a thin smile, as she turned and walked away.

Shmi went to the Ivory Hallway. 

Kneeling on the floor, scrubbing at the scuff marks left by dragging boots and what appeared to be a smear of orange slime, Shmi could almost pretend that it was just a typical day.

All the days of her life had been very regular-- _ normal _ \--but now everything seemed odd. Comparing her days now to what they had been before was like comparing a pair of puzzle pictures set side by side: the first, the unaltered  image, and the second changed slightly in a dozen small ways. The trick was to find all the alterations in the second image, because when you looked at it as a whole, of course it looked the same as the first.  _ Of course. _

She marched to the nearest cleaning closet and slopped out the dirty bucket. Wiping her hands off on a rag and tucking a strand of hair back into place, she hurried off toward the slave-handler’s office.

When she arrived, there was no one there.

For a moment, Shmi stood in the doorway, staring at the empty room. Then she a strange sound. 

Carefully, she padded into the room. The sound, a wet burbling, noise grew louder and louder as she approached the desk. The slave-handler’s chair was pushed out, but no one sat there. A tray sat on the desktop, arranged with a half-empty cup of blue milk and the bones of some small, brightly feathered creature.

Then she saw him.

“Sir!” 

Shmi dashed around the desk, flinging herself down beside the twisted form of the slave-handler. His eyes, which had always looked like a cluster of stars in a dark night sky, were filmed-over.

“Sir?” She leaned over him, taking him by the shoulders. Groaning, he reached up a palsied hand.  A dark foam bubbled at the corners of his mouth.

“Shmi...Shmi….?” His voice was little more than a harsh whisper. He coughed, and black foam flecked the front of her tunic. 

His whole body shuddered, and all the breath went out of him in a great rush.

The hand she held in her own felt like clammy left-overs ready for the menagerie midden. She let it go. 

Shmi had looked into her mother’s face when there was no life left in it. She looked at the slave-handler now and knew he was dead.

The door banged open.

“Here--here--” 

Shmi stood up abruptly, facing a squad of house guards led by Paz Meyoti.

“Shmi,” Paz Meyoti looked at her in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

The house guards rushed past her, roughly pushing her aside. One kneeled, producing a small vitals scanner, and held it up to the Rodian’s mouth. It beeped, then flashed bright red. 

The guard looked up at her fellows. “Dead,” she said.

Then all of them turned toward Shmi, their eyes accusing. She took a step back, and walked directly into the solid, broad chest of Paz Meyoti.

“Shmi, what have you done?” He whispered.

She shook her head, but he sunk away from her. The guards rose and encircled her. They grabbed her by the arms, and dragged her toward the door. 

She never stopped shaking her head, but none of them noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've thought a lot about the Kage since they appeared in The Clone Wars episode "Bounty". We're not told a lot about them in canon (or even in Legends tbh), so everything Ahn-kin tells Shmi about Kage culture is my personal headcanon using that single episode as a starting point.


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

 

They put her in a dark room. It was like the time she fell in the rancor pit: only striations of light, hovering over her, and the hot, oppressive dark. It stank, not quit the hot raw meat stink of the rancor but something else. The menagerie midden might be nearby. And her arms hurt, too, from where the guards had bruised her, and the right side of her ribs throbbed where she’s been kicked.

They thought she had killed the slave-handler.

Arms wrapped around herself, Shmi paced the corners of her cell. There wasn’t must to look at. It was only the rough-hewn walls and a single door with a barred grate just a little too high for her to see out through. There were shackles on the walls, crude chains that hung down like thick vines.

Standing up on tiptoe, Shmi grabbed the bars on the door-grate and tried to pull herself up enough to see out in the hall.

Far off to the right, out of her field of vision, an electro-lantern flickered. There was no guard outside her door. No one. She could hear someone screaming, muffled and wild, far off in the distance.

She screamed too, but no one answered.

Eventually, exhausted, she retreated to the far side of the cell, where the striped light from above fell on her face. She folded her legs up to her chest, hugged her knees, and closed her eyes. Red glowed behind her eyelids until the suns moved, and the light faded away.

A soft clatter sounded from the door.

Shmi jolted upright, unfolding , and looked toward the door. Through the bars, she saw the two gleaming pinpoints of Ahn-kin Dai’s eyes.

“I am here to ask you some questions,” he said in that crackling, digitized voice.

What it to be interrogation-- _torture_ \--then?

Shmi shook her head fiercely.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “I swear it.”

The bodyguard was silent for a moment. Then he turned his head and said something very softly to a being Shmi could not see. She heard the sound of footfalls tromping away, but Ahn-kin Dai remained, studying her through the bars.

“I have been given access to the slave handler’s notes by his aide. Kaskuu kept files on all of his charges,” he said at last. “Are you aware of who your father was?”

“No.”

“Did you never wonder?”

“It’s not odd for a slave to have only one parent, or no parents at all. No one else acted as if it was odd, so...I never thought it was.”

“Your father,” Ahn-kin Dai said. “Was a guest of Gardulla’s from Coruscant. He had a disagreement with her, and drew a blaster on her in the salon. Your mother was wounded in the scuffle.”

Ama’s face: the shiny red tissue of the burn scar curving up from her cheek and across her temple, dragging at the corner of her eye, scorching part of her hair away.

_A stray blaster bolt._

“He was captured and executed by Gardulla’s house guards.”

“I didn’t know,” Shmi whispered.

“They think that this was your motive for attempting to assassinate her: a grudge from your childhood.”

“ _But I didn’t know_.”

Somehow, she found herself standing before the door, clasping the bars in her hands. She didn't remember walking toward him, but she must have. She had to, to hear him speak, because he never raised his voice, not even once.

He studied her silently. Then, without another word, turned and walked away.

“Wait-”

She lunged after him so quickly that she knocked her forehead against the bars. Pain sang through her. She clenched her eyes closed and waited for the throbbing to subside.

She breathed in until her bruised ribs creaked. Then slowly, she released all that held breath. She let her head loll against the door, and uncurled her first from around the bars. She slid down until she sat against the door, her hands limp in her lap.

Shmi closed her eyes.

And heard the lock on the door pop open.

She scrabbled for the door handle and tested it. The door squeaked on its rust hinges. She pushed it open just enough to peer out into the hallway. It was just as she saw before, though: no one in sight, not even a guard.

“Hello?”

No one answered her.

She spared a single glance back into the cell, then made a run for it.

She’d lost one of her shoes when she was dragged from the office, and now she kicked free of the remaining shoe and zipped barefoot down the corridor. Ahead, the electro-lamp guided her like a beacon, it’s dingy yellow light glinting off the slimy walls. A narrow stairway spiraled up and away-- t _o safety?_ She hoped it was a place she recognized.

Pausing on the first step, she listened with her entire body, trying to pick out even the slightest susurrus of sound. No footfalls echoed from above, and no voices either.

Shmi scurried up the steps.

As she reached the top of the staircase, Shmi froze again. There came the heavy footfalls of the house guard. Holding her breath, she sank back into the shadows on her knees and waited.

Her body turned to stone, motionless and calm. She waited for what seemed like an hour, yet her legs did not cramp. Her lungs never ached for lack of breath. She heard the guard come and go, talking amongst themselves.

“...Said there was another assassin about, and to stay alert.”

“...may be more poison in the kitchen stores. They’re scanning everything now…”

“...but how could a slave get ahold of enough slabin to poison ol’ Gardulla? Can you imagine how much it would take…?”

“Shhh..shhh...shut up, you bantha turd.”

Their tromping footfalls receded into silence at last and Shmi knew she was truly alone.

Carefully, she unfolded herself from the wall and stood up.

She should return to her cell, she thought guiltily. If they went down and found her missing, wouldn’t it just serve as proof to her captors that she was somehow involved in Master Kaskuu’s murder? The thought came and went. She pushed it aside and focused instead on one, single goal:

_Find Paz Meyoti._

Shmi was certain that Paz Meyoti would believe her if she went to him and explained what had happened. She had only just found Master Kaskuu like that, and of course it must have looked very incriminating from where he was standing, but she hadn’t tried to poison Gardulla the Hutt or anyone else for that matter! All she had to do was explain this to him, and he would exonerate her before the guards. Then they could continue the search for the real culprit.

Twice more as she navigated the hall, she had to duck behind a pillar to avoid being spotted by the guards. The house had never felt like such a maze before, the lantern light never so garish and lurid: a sickly green that tinged the darkness like swamp gas. To get within eyesight of the Slave-handler’s office seemed to take the whole night but she had no idea how long it had actually been. No alarm had rung since she left her cell, so they must not have noticed she was missing.

She rapped on the office door, but no one asked her in. She went to turn the handle, when a pair of hands grabbed her shoulders and twisted her around.

Shmi’s hands went up defensively, but as she was slammed back against the closed door all the air was knocked out of her.  She flailed at her attacker, pushing her palms against a smooth face as it bent down close to her. Dark blue hood in the dark.

“Shmi, what are you doing here?” hissed Paz Meyoti.

She sighed in relief.

“Paz,” she sighed his name in relief. “I’ve been trying to find you. They have it all wrong. None of this is my doing.”

“You’re supposed to be down in the dungeon,” He said, as if he hadn't heard her.

“I didn't kill anyone, I swear it,” Shmi continued, desperation sharpening her voice. “When I went into the office, the slave-handler was already dying. I don’t know anything about any poison. You have to believe me.”

He was looking up and down the hallway with a caged, annoyed expression. Like a hortacamp pacing its enclosure. All at once, he seemed to realize she had stopped talking, and looked at her intently.

“I believe you,” he said squeezing her arms.

“Then you’ll speak for me?”

He pulled her away from the door, glancing up and down the hallway.

“Yes, I’ll speak for you Shmi. I promise you that. Come along.”

Hooking his arm around her shoulders, he began to guide her away from the office door and back down the hall, toward--

“I’ll take you to Gardulla right now. We’ll get this all straightened out.”

“You’re certain she’ll want to see me now?” Shmi asked. “The house guard is on high alert.”

“Yes, the salon has been canceled tonight. Right now, they believe you and Ixse were paid by an outsider to poison Gardulla and her guests--”

“Ixse?” Shmi gaped in shock. “What’s happened to her?”

“Nothing good, I’m afraid.” Meyoti flashed her an apologetic smile. “I believe they were planning to interrogate her first.”

Shmi could only shake her head in disbelief. There was no way Ixse Groof would betray her employer. Ixse was fiercely loyal to Gardulla. She had never liked Shmi, but then again she had never been friendly with any of the slaves. It made no sense that Ixse would flip and betray Gardulla after countless cycles of loyal service.

“I can’t believe it,” Shmi said. “She’s been wrongly accused, the same as me. I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll set this right,” Paz Meyoti said with determination, and he squeezed her shoulders so tightly her bones creaked. “I’ll make sure of it”

Gardulla was hidden away in her chambers, awaiting word from the kitchens concerning the state of the food stores but Paz Meyoti was certain she would see Shmi.

He led Shmi up to a gold plated blast door and pressed one of the many jewel-bright buttons that made up the communication panel beside the door.

A voice speaking Huttese burbled out of the comm.

Meyoti answered in kind, and the armored door flicked open with the sound of decompressing locks. He stepped behind her, his hands clamping down on both her shoulders, and pushed her into the room.

It was the first time Shmi had been this close to Gardulla the Hutt.

A squad of house guards flanked Gardulla, guards of all shapes and sizes, yet wearing the same decorative armor and garish gold helmets. They watched her from the eye-slits of the helmets, their blaster-rifles held out in front of them, yet trained on the ground. From somewhere came the sound of water splishing and splashing. Fountains with roaring rancor faces belched streams of water out of the walls and into gleaming basins.  At the center of it all was Gardulla, her chest and arms strung with ropes of glimmering stones, like the chandelier at the center of the salon room.

To her left stood her Kage bodyguard, a dark slash in the center of the bright, beautiful chamber.

“She escaped the dungeons somehow,” Paz Meyoti was saying in Huttese. She didn't know how long he had been speaking. “I found her in the halls. She swears she is innocent of all charges.”

“The kitchen assistant already confessed. She gave up this slave as her accomplice before she died.” Gardulla’s personal assistant, a pale pink Theelin woman said, looking Shmi up and down disdainfully from over the edge of her datapad. “Unfortunately, that was before she could say who paid them to do it.”

“No one paid us.” Shmi said, baffled. “We did no such thing. We didn’t--” She looked up at Paz Meyoti, but he looked like a different person to her now, hard edges and cold eyes. And his mouth, which seemed to always be smiling before, was flat.

“Perhaps this one can tell us.” Gardulla said, gesturing to Shmi with a flick of her bejeweled hand.

“No.” Shmi said, but all around her they continued to speak about her as if she was not even there.

_No._

The word built up inside her, strong and stronger, until it pounded in her head like a drum: _No, no, no._

“No!” She shouted.

The entire room went silent. Eyes swiveled on eyestalks, glinted mercilessly at her in surprise. She caught her breath, panting--

And thick pinkish smoke began to pour out of the elaborate ventilation grates high on the walls.

Quickly, the room was filled with screams of alarm and confusion: coughing, cursing. Shapes blundered through the fog. Shmi found herself flung into the chaos, striking against one of the guards so hard that they both fell to the ground. The pink smoke burned her eyes and mouth like hot sand, and she pulled the collar of her tunic up and over her mouth as she coughed and wheezed. Above her, blast bolts flashed through the fog. Someone screamed in pain, and a Trandoshan guard struck the floor, lifeless, just as Shmi rolled out of the way

Scuttling backward, she struck the wall,  stumbled against one of the fountains. Using the basin, she levered herself up onto her feet.

She could just barely make out a dark, darting shape, weaving in and out of the guards, striking them down one by one. Shmi fumbled one hand along the wall, feeling for the door, but somehow she’d gotten all turned around. Instead of finding the elaborate security door she’d come through, she found an opened secret door, and slid down a narrow gangway. At the bottom, she bounced back up onto her feet, blinking in confusion.

She was staring at the back of Gardulla’s throne.

The hall was decorated for guests, but the tables had no plates or cups on them, the musical instruments stood abandoned on the portable stage. Gardulla and her Theelin assistant rushed ahead, the Theelin woman gripping one of Gardulla’s jeweled hands and dragging her forward as if she hoped to propel her mistress to safety through sheer force of will. Following behind them was a now familiar dark shape: Ahn-kin Dai.

Shmi called out to him, but all that came out was a choked cough. He still heard her, though. Waving Gardulla and her assistant forward, Ahn-kin dai turned back to look at her.

She had the feeling someone was standing behind her, but turned to face them only a moment too late. A vice-tight grip caught her by the shoulder and spun her back around and pain shot up her arm as her attacker twisted it up  behind her back. The barrel of a blaster came to rest across her shoulder and the resulting shot going off so close to her ear temporarily stunned her. The blaster-shot missed Ahn-kin Dai but struck Gardulla’s Theelin assistant square in the back. The assistant gave a half-hearted cry then collapsed, her shoulder smoldering.

The blaster jolted against Shmi’s shoulder again and Ahn-kin Dai leaped forward, deflecting the bolt with one vibroblade. Darting across the room in a series of flips and twists, he avoided each blaster bolt as they peppered the tiles at his feet. Nothing slowed him. He flew across the room like an unleashed claw-bird.

“Stop!” Paz Meyoti snarled, and dug the muzzle of the blaster between Shmi’s shoulderblades.

To her surprise, Ahn-kin Dai froze, crouched at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes glowed fiercely over the top of his mask. The only sound was the zip and crackle of his unsheathed vibroblades, and the ragged breathing from Paz Meyoti’s own mouth.

Meyoti gave a smug snort of laughter.

“I can’t believe you,” the Pantoran said, his voice hard and disappointed. “ _You_ , Gardulla’s fancy Kage warrior. I heard so much about you, about what a challenge you would be for me. But you gave up so easily. And for what? For _this_?”

He gestured to Shmi with the blaster and she realized that he was talking about _her._

As if she was _not even a person._

Something inside her welled up, fierce and bright and angry. Yes, _angry._ Her hands clenched, her teeth grit.   _How dare he, how dare--_

_I am a person and my name is Skywalker._

Suddenly, Meyoti cried out, as if burnt. The hand that twisted her arm behind her back loosened somewhat, enough for her to fling back her head and crack her skull into Meyoti’s nose. He howled in pain and she twisted out of the way.  A vibroblade whistled past her head and struck the Pantoran solidly in the chest.

His eyes went wide. He looked at her as the blade crackled and sung between his ribs. The blaster clattered uselessly onto the pretty tile floor. He rocked back on his heels and hit the ground flat as a board, empty eyes fixed on the jewel-draped ceiling.

Dark blood pooled beneath his head.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She sat on the jade steps of the dais, her hands in her lap, and stared at nothing as slaves and servants and cleaning droids moved around her. Bodies removed, carbon scoring buffed out of the floor tiles, all trace of bloor mopped up and sanitized off the floor. No one asked her to help, nor even spoke to he even to tell her to move out of the way. It was as if she didn't exist, and that was _fine_. Her heart was calm, quiet, as it had been after Ama had died.

Someone sat down beside her.

“Ixse Groof’s translator was tampered with,” Ahn-kin Dai said, sitting down on the step next her. “I inspected it myself, along with holovid of her interrogation. Her interrogators thought she was confessing only because it was a preprogrammed message, imbedded in the translator. She died pledging her allegiance to Gardulla, and none of her guards knew it because none of them could speak Ithorian.”

“It was Paz Meyoti all along, wasn’t it?”

The bodyguard nodded.

“He maneuvered himself into place expertly. He might have succeeded if you hadn’t sabotaged his plans.”

“What do you mean?,” Shmi’s asked, bewildered. “I didn’t do anything.”

Above the edge of his mask, Ahn-kin Dai’s eyes narrowed slightly. She thought he might be smiling at her under that mask but she couldn’t be certain.

It was then that she noticed that one of his bright yellow eyes was now a glowing pink. “Your eye,” she said.

Ahn-kin Dai sat up abruptly, and he pressed a gloved hand over his eye. She could still see the pink iris glowing between his gloved fingers.

“Are you hurt?” Shmi asked, peering at him.

“No,” he said, digitized voice crackling. Abruptly he stood, his armor plated kilt clicking like giant insect jaws. “I clear you of any and all accusations against you,” he said. “You may return to your work.”

“Wait.”

He had started down the stairs but when she spoke, he actually stopped and turned.

She rose to her feet, at eye level with him now because of where she stood on the dias stairs.

“Did you free me from my cell?”

“You freed yourself, Shmi Skywalker,” he said.

When he walked away from her this time, she let him go.


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

 

A new cook’s assistant was hired for the kitchen, a new slave-handler installed in the slave-handler’s office, and finally there was word that there was to be a new personal bodyguard for Gardulla.

“Gardulla’s Kage warrior is leaving. They’re hiring a whole team of bounty hunters to fill out the household guard.”

“A whole team?”

“Yes, led by some Weequay woman. They call her _The Throttler of the Fourth Sector_.”

“That’s a mouthful. Don’t they have a shorter name for her?”

“Just _The Throttler_ , I guess?”

Laughter was welcome. It was good to hear it after so long: the genuine kind of laughter, not desperate or hushed. Yet Shmi couldn’t join in. A void had opened in her chest.

The day Ahn-kin Dai left the palace grounds, the entire household went out to see him off.. He was leaving,yes, but he had saved their mistress from her most cunning assassin yet. Shmi stood in a block with the house slaves, her arms folded across her chest. Ahn-kin Dai strode toward the speeder,  his neck draped in garlands of terribly rare Felucian flowers. A cord of sparkling gems, straight from around Gardulla’s own neck, was twisted around his left gauntlet. A full band was playing, accompanied by acrobats and dancers and Gardulla herself stood beneath a fluttering awning, graciously waving him off.

When he reached the speeder he turned and offered his former mistress a polite bow.

A togrutan dancing girl blew him a kiss.

Someone muttered in Basic, “She offered him a fortune to stay on. He wouldn't do it.”

“What a fool.”

“Or maybe he just knows how to drive a hard bargain.”

“He’ll be back.”

In her heart, Shmi wanted nothing more than for him to look back into the crowd and see her, even if she knew it was foolish. As he stepped up onto the speeder, he hesitated there, almost as if he could hear her private thoughts. But he did not look back. He ducked down into the cab and off it went, glittering silver into the distorted desert horizon.

The music squeaked to a halt.

Quickly, Gardulla retreated back into the house with her retinue. The stewards began shouting for everyone to get back to work. Servants and slaves pushed past her, hurrying back to resume their daily work. Crushed flowers lay scattered all around her, withering in the heat.

Shmi remained, shielding her eyes against the glare of the suns, until she could no longer see the speeder.

Even then, she waited; her heart stretched out over the sand, her eyes as dry as the wastes. She could never cry when it seemed right to do so. Perhaps if she wasn’t crying, it wasn’t the end.

 

 

 

* * *

 

  


_Skywalker._

_Skywalker!_

Shmi woke, flinging herself upright in bed.

“Shmi, stop! Go back to bed!”, one of her hovel-mates groaned groggily.

“What...? What is it?” That was Zarba.

“Nothing. Shmi’s just having a nightmare again.”

But she hadn’t, not really. She was certain someone had been calling her name. It had sounded so close, as close as the little round window and its tattered curtain.

“She’d better not be,” Zarba said.

Shmi laid back down and closed her eyes, but the more she tried to sleep, the more clear-headed she became. Now she was certain that she hadn’t been dreaming. Someone had been calling her. Her heart would not still, and her feet were restless.

She waited until Zarba began to gently snore, then she pried herself up off her sleeping mat and tip-toed across the floor. Pushing back the curtain that overhung the hovel’s single window, she peered out into the moon-smeared night.

The moons showed the same faces they had on that night she’d danced with Ahn-kin Dai around the fountain. She remembered the gleam of the speeder on the horizon as it carried Ahn-kin Dai away, and something in the dark outside her window gleamed in answer: two bright pin-points in the dark.

She let the certain drop back into place and quietly went out into the night.

The sand was cool beneath the thin soles of her shoes and the night air pulled at the hairs on the back of her arms. She folded her arms across her chest and tucked her hands into her sleeves.

He stood in the dark between two hovels, just across from Shmi’s front door. Motionless, he was nearly invisible, a shadow within another shadow. It was his eyes that gave him away, glowing as bright as yellow stars.

Shmi went toward him, hesitating on the line where the light of the moons was cut short by the darkness of the alley. He wore a black knee-length tactical cloak over his armor. He did _not_ wear his mask.

“What are you doing here?” She looked him up and down, convinced she must be dreaming. He was so wondrously out of place that it was the only way his presence made sense.

“I couldn’t leave you here.”

When Shmi had looked into her mother’s lifeless eyes, something within her had withered closed. Now, she looked into Ahn-kin Dai’s eyes, glowing with starlight and _alive_ \--yes, vibrantly _alive--_ in a way she was not, yet she wanted to be. She had thought him cold at first but within him was that warmth, that energy, that rivaled the dual suns of Tatooine! That thing within her that had withered shut flexed open at last, like a evernight flower that blooms only once in hundred years.  It was as if her heart had just started beating again, after a decade of stillness.

“But I can’t.” she said, trying to drive the feeling back. “There’s a...”

“A transmitter. Yes, I know,” he said. “What if I told you that I could disable it?”

With this, Ahn-kin Dai produced a palm-sized scanner, oval-shaped and smooth as graphite, and held it out for her inspection.

“Is there somewhere we can go?”

She led him into an empty repair shed and bumped around in the dark until he reached over her head and turned on the electro-lamp. Light bloomed outward, faint at first then harshly bright. The lamp swung slowly back and forth on its cord, making their shadows dance together on the walls.  

She held her arms out from her sides and stood perfectly still as he traced the transmitter along the length of her limbs.  He was too tall for the low beams of the shed, so he circled her with shoulders stooped, frowning down at the little scanner screen. As he knelt to pass the scanner over the tips of her toes, her gaze strayed to the way he pinched his bottom lip between his teeth. She wondered how often he had made that exact same expression behind his facemask. It made him look younger, less certain.

As if he heard her thoughts, Ahn-kin glanced up. Their eyes met, and they both reflexively glanced away.

He stood abruptly and walked around behind her, the scanner humming in his hand.

“That day we first met, when I came across you dancing…” He spoke carefully, measuring out each and every word as if afraid he might exceed some daily ration. “Why were you there? I’d walked that way before and never seen you. Why _that_ night?”

She could hear him moving, hear the rustle of his cloak.  The scanner glided past her ear.

“I had a dream,” She told him, hugging her arms across her chest. Suddenly, she felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “Two men stepped down from the sky, and they had swords made of fire.”

“Made of fire?”

“Yes, swords glowing brighter than the suns.”

“Those sound like a Jedi lightsabers to me.”

“Jedi?”

“You know who the Jedi are, don’t you?”

“I think so,” Shmi said.

“The weapon of a Jedi is a laser sword, a _lightsaber._ It’s a unique weapon that only the Jedi know how to make. Why would you dream of them?”

“I’m not sure.” Shmi shook her head. “But I’ve had the dream many times. Sometimes  parts of it are different, but overall it’s the same.”

Just then, the scanner lightly bumped the braid that fell between her shoulderblades and a high-pitched chime blared in her ear. She flinched, yanking her braid forward over her shoulder. Ahn-kin whispered an apology.

“No, it’s alright,” Shmi said breathlessly. “You just startled me.”

“I found the transmitter. It’s right here.”

The tips of two gloved fingers pressed solidly between her left shoulder blade and her spine. As his fingertips rolled over it, she felt the little nanobot--about the size of a pebble-- sliding under her skin. She cringed.

“I can feel it now. I never noticed it before. It’s... _odd._ ”

Knowing it was there _unnerved_ her. It had been there since she was a baby, a silent threat riding around under her skin. She tried not to think about what might have happened if it had ever gone off. It could have snapped her spine, evaporated her heart...

“It’s not exactly in a convenient place for you to scratch, but that’s probably the point.” There was the slightest hint of warmth in his voice. Shmi could almost imagine him smiling.

He pressed the scanner against her back, and only a dull negatory beep sounded from it’s miniature speaker. Ahn-kin tried again. Beep. Beep. _Beep_.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him, daring a sharp glance back.

He cleared his throat. “I, uh, might need you to lift up your tunic.”

“Oh. _oh._ ” She scrambled to undo the knot in her belt, but for some reason her hands kept faltering. She wrestled with the cloth, her short nails digging into the fibers, but she barely managed to pry the knot open.

“Do you need help?”

“No, _no_! I can do it…”

She was keenly aware of him, standing on the periphery of her vision, his eyes glowing in the dark as they flicked from her face to her fumbling hands, then back again, and again…

Sighing, she turned to him at last.

“Would you help me?” she asked, bowing her head.

His long fingers picked the belt open in seconds, so quickly that she felt foolish for having such difficulty with it.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured despairingly when the belt slipped easily into her hand.

Ahn-kin blinked at her. “For what?”

His voice betrayed the confusion that his blank face did not.

“For who I am.”

He tilted his head slightly, studying her.  After what felt like an entire day of his scrutiny, he said: “I have become rather fond of who you are.”

Before she could reply he added, “Now, the transmitter.”

She turned away from him and shrugged her tunic up onto her shoulders, leaving her back bare. Gently, he pressed the scanner against her flesh. There was a sting of cold metal, a single, low vibration and then it was over.

The thing had been deactivated.

She was _free._

Shmi sagged forward against the wall in relief. She had half-thought the thing was going to _explode_ right then and there. They’d always heard that tampering with the transmitters would set them off. There were horror stories of slaves who had been killed simply by a malfunction of the transmitter.

But it had simply turned off.

Could it _really_ be that easy?  Was she now really and truly _free_?

“Are you alright?”, Ahn-kin asked softly.

Straightening, Shmi let her tunic drop back into place. When she turned to face him, he was so still he didn’t even seem to be breathing.

They were standing close enough to touch, yet some invisible force held them apart like two opposing magnets, repelled rather than attracted. His hands, once extended out toward her, fell to his sides. All at once, he remembered that he still held the transmitter, and tucked it back into a compartment on his belt with a soundless sigh.

Shmi had the paralyzing sense that she had missed something very important, offended in some way, but she didn't understand _how._

Yet the knowledge was in her, in a breathless fluttering panic. She knew with all the fear that her servitude had ingrained into her that she had done something wrong, but she didn’t know _what._

“We should get going.” Ahn-kin Dai started to turn away.

It was as if the magnets had changed position. Suddenly, Shmi was free to move.

“Ahn-kin?”

He blinking down at her quizzically.

She stepped forward and caught his nearest his hand in both of her own. His eyes grew round in shock, the star-shaped pupils expanding slightly, but she stared into them as she held his hand, feeling more brave than she had in all her life.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice someone else’s voice, though it came from her lips.

Slowly, ever-so-slowly, his fingers curled around hers.

At last he said, “Let’s go, Skywalker.”

Still holding her hand, he led her back out into the night.


	7. Chapter 7

**7.**

 

They left well before sunrise, on a narrow two-seat speeder that Ahn-kin had picked up in Mos Espa.

As they drove, Ahn-kin explained to Shmi that Gardulla’s valet had _indeed_ driven him all the way to Mos Espa--left him there, even--but that he had turned around and rode back to get her with only a rented speeder and the newly acquired (and not altogether legal) disabling scanner. The legally suspect was a part of daily life in the major ports of Tatooine. Ahn-kin Dai easily found what he needed and returned to the estate under cover of darkness.

Shmi had nothing of particular sentimental value back at her hovel, so Ahn-kin offered her his tactical cloak and they left Gardulla’s estate behind.

Clinging to his waist, air roaring past her ears, Shmi watched the only place she had ever known dissolve into nothing more than a cluster of electric lights far off in the distance. She imagined that that was how all of Tatooine looked from the cockpit of a space freighter: a cluster of pin-point lights amid a sea of nothing. Stars hovering in the sky.

They were driving down a ravine, the whine of the speeder’s engine echoing in triplicate. The speeder snaked easily between the stones, taking the slow easy curves expertly.

She thought she should feel exultant, or at least have a sense of relief, but every mile the thought came to her, rising up like something rotten from the bottom of a water trough: _I am making a mistake._

“Where I am from--” Ahn-kin's voice sliced away the thoughts that tormented her, startling her back around.  “--The sharing of a dream is a private confidence. If someone shares a dream they had with you,  it  becomes your task to help them discover its meaning and either accomplish it or thwart it.”

It took her a moment to realize he was talking about the dream she had told him about back in the repair shed, picking the conversation back up as if no time had passed since then.

“Are you going to help me discover the meaning of my dream, Ahn-kin Dai?”, she asked him, leaning forward over his shoulder enough to glimpse his profile. He was still not wearing his mask, but all she could see was the sharp line of his long nose and the yellow glow from one eye.

“Yes,” he replied with all seriousness.

“And you’re going to help me accomplish it?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Is that why you’re helping me escape?”

Something happened to his face just then, some change so slighty that it might have been negligible, but Shmi saw it.

“That’s part of it,” he muttered, so quietly she strained forward to catch the words.

Then something struck the nose of the speeder.

The craft flipped up, end over end, and for a second Shmi was airborne. For one terrible moment, she hovered in space, tethered to nothing, while the rocks and sand surged up toward her.

She slammed into the ground.

Momentum hurled her onward, tumbling and scraping, until she came to rest face down in the sand. She lay prone for a moment, sparks of light danced across her vision. Behind her, she heard the whine of the speeder still going on and on-- the engine sputtering, revving, and then revving again.

When she lifted her head, sand poured out of her hair. She ached all along her right side, her dress was torn, but instinct drove her to her feet. She struggled up, staring ahead at where the speeder jutted out of the dirt far ahead of her, it’s nose buried in sand. Something had pierced it right through the hood.

A short metal spear, with a wickedly curved tip.

Still in shock, she stared at it for a long moment, wondering what it could mean. And then the explosion knocked her onto her back.

The speeder vanished in a flash of noise and light, streamers of fire shooting contorted strips of metal into the night sky. The rocks of the ravine blazed bright white with reflected light, and then faded to deep orange as the heart of the fire continued to burn slow and steadily.

Ahn-kin.

Shmi tried to say his name, but her voice scraped in her throat, smothered with sand and grit. The black column of smoke rising up from the wreck stung her eyes and it was almost impossible to see through the shimmer of reflexive tears.

“Ahn-kin?”

A horrible, ululating cry blared above the sound of his whispered name. It was a shrieking unlike anything Shmi had ever heard, amplified by the walls of the ravine. For as long as she lived, she would never forget the sound.

Shmi whirled to face it as a half-dozen ghouls rushed out of the pools of black shadows beneath the boulders, bellowing that terrible war cry.

She jerked her arms up reflexively to shield her face, but they were already upon her: a wall of lidless, black-lens eyes and gaping mouthparts that had no teeth--no tongues. Bandaged-wrapped hands seized her by the cloak, lifting her up onto her heels and pushing her, kicking and flailing, backward. She twisted out of the tactical cloak, only to have them grab her by her arms, carrying her away like refuse on a roaring wind.

Suddenly, a vibroblade zipped past her head, so close she felt its crackling edge singe hair.

The raider to her left screamed as a gout of black blood splashed across her sleeve. He collapsed against her, baring her down to the ground. The hideous bandaged visage blew hot wails of breath directly into her face.

Rather than trying to recapture her, the other raiders broke and fled as quickly as they had attacked, leaving both Shmi and the dying raider behind.

Shmi heaved the raider off her, but the wounded thing clawed at her, crooked hands twisting toward her throat. Bloody spittle sprayed out of the wide maw, splashing down on her. Jaw clamped tight against her alarmed scream, Shmi shoved the raider away and she twisted out of reach, kicking sand at the gleaming, dark lenses.  

An armored boot came down hard on the Tusken’s back, driving him into the dirt. He stopped moving at last.

Shmi looked up at the now-familiar shape of Ahn-kin Dai. His long hair had come loose from its neat tail, and a trail of purple-dark blood ran from his nostrils over his lips. But his expression was a calm and composed as ever it was, and when he looked at her, a sigh of relief rushed out of her unbidden.

“Ahn-kin.”

Quick and quiet, he helped her onto her feet. For a moment, he held her by the arms, and she clasped his arms in return, looking up into his face, battered from the crash, but not broken. She pulled her sleeve into her palm and used the hem to wipe the blood from his nose.

“We have to keep going,” he said, taking her gently but firmly by the hand.

“But the speeder-”

“I passed a homestead on the way back to Gardulla’s compound. We can make it there by sunrise, even on foot. But we have to keep going, now.”

He began to lead her away, his much longer strides forcing her to jog to keep up.

“But what if they try to send me back?”

He stopped short and pivoted to peer down at her.

“Why would they try to send you back?”.

“Because I’m-” But she wasn’t anymore, _was she_?

Did she imagine that out there, the rest of the galaxy would look at her and just _know?_ That they could tell by the way she looked or stood, or spoke, that she was not born a free being? For a moment, she really did believe that but then she realized that it wasn't true.

No one could tell by looking at her who her mother or father had been. Nothing about her said where she was from. She was as plain and nondescript as Tatooine itself.

Out in the world beyond Tatooine, where she would venture with Ahn-kin, she would be lost like a grain of sand in the desert. And the likelihood that she crossed paths with those men--those Jedi--would dwindle down to _nothing._

If they came to Tatooine and she was not here, they would never find her out there among the stars.

And that knowledge crushed her heart.

For a moment, she couldn’t draw a breath. She lifted her free hand and laid it against Ahn-kin's chest.

His expression changed then, shifted subtly. He tilted his head almost imperceptibly, his eyes narrowing.

“What is it?”

“I have to go back,” Shmi whispered.

His face went slack. “What?”

“I’m sorry but I have to. I just _have to._ ”

“No.”

“Ahn-kin--”

“Is this because of the speeder? The raiders? That’s nothing. You think we’re defeated before we’ve even begun, but they’re minor obstacles. I’m telling you, we can make it. We just have to keep going until sunrise.”

There was a battle happening on his face, one he was having with himself: the composure cracking and reasserting itself. He held her hands so tight, pressed hard against his armored chestplate, that she swore she could feel his heart beating fiercely beneath it-- as vividly as if she held his heart in her bare hands.

“It’s not the raiders,” she said. “It’s not any of that--”

“Is it _me_?” His voice caught on that last word.

“ _No_.” She shook her head, but he wasn’t looking at her--he was trying to turn away, to push away her hands. She followed him, grabbing him by the straps of his chestplate and dragging him down to look at her.

“Ahn-kin Dai, look at me.” He relented, but his smooth face was blood-smeared and miserable. His eyes looked dull in a way she never thought possible.

“Ahn-kin Dai--” Shmi drew a deep breath, reaching down, deep within her. She gathered his hands into her own and held them close. When she spoke, it wasn’t with her voice but with her mother’s voice. _Her Ama’s voice._ “I’ve never met anyone like you before in all my life. And if I stay here, I don’t think I will _ever again_. ”

“Then why won’t you come with me?”

“The Jedi,” she said.

“The Jedi?”

“If I go...if I leave with you now, then I will never see them.”

He shook his head.

“If you go back there,” he said. “You’ll go back to being what you were before. They’ll treat you like _a thing_ to be bought and sold. You deserve so much more than that. You deserve more than sitting on this rock, waiting for a day that may never come.”

“I have to.”

“You don't have to do anything,” he said, but there was resignation written in every line of his face. “You’re _free_.”

“Then I _choose_ to go back.”

A breath hissed out of him: a laugh, but so bitter and sorrowful that it sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before. He tried to turn away again, but she hung onto him and wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t shake her off.

“I _know_ I’m not saying it right. I _know_ I’m not,” she said, desperation sharpening her tone. “If I were better with words, I could explain it in such a way that you would understand--”

“There are no Jedi coming here for you. Whatever dreams you have, they’re just _dreams._ This, here--” He raised their joined hands between them, meeting her eyes over their laced-together fingers. “--This is real.”

“The sharing of a dream is a private confidence between two people, that’s what you said, isn’t it?” He sighed, shaking his head--looked away. “If someone shares a dream they had with you,  it  becomes your mission to help them accomplish it, right? Isn’t that right?”

“You’re twisting my words-”

“But that’s what you said.”

He closed his eyes to shut her out. Helplessly, she stared up at him, waiting. Would he never look at her again?

All at once, he looked older, the shadows etching lines around his eyes and mouth where none had been before. No, _older_ wasn’t the right word for it. He looked _tired_ . Shmi understood _that_ , at least.

“Ahn-kin,” she called softly. “Help me?”

His eyes opened, slowly. The bright eyes flicked toward her. He met her gaze, and didn’t look away. She watched as the shadows withdrew from his face, returning that calm and impassive countenance to her. To her, he had always looked like a night sky; dark and cool and smooth, shimmering.

Silently, he nodded in agreement.

“Thank you,” Shmi whispered and flung her arms around him.

The pair embraced for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity. She wanted this to be what she remembered above all else. Everything that led to this moment could fade away with time, but this minute of belonging--of compassion--was what she wanted to remember for the rest of her days.

Shmi heard the song of the stars so keenly just then but it wasn’t coming from the sky above. The song echoed out from within Ahn-kin Dai and from within herself. She breathed deep--breathed starlight. She could hear the stars’ perfect, glittering song, and it moved through her in shimmering waves. She breathed again, tightening her arms around Ahn-kin’s thin waist. She smelled the fabric of the stars inside the armor-weave of his garments, in her dirt-filled hair.

“Goodbye, Skywalker,” she thought she heard him say.

She lifted her head, and his lips burned a ghostly brand against her forehead.  Then he stepped back. When Shmi opened her eyes, he was standing away from her, a dark shape sketched out of the light from the dying flames of the speeder. She was the one who had to move first, she realized. It was her choice to walk away.

So she did. _She walked away._

There was only one moment when she dared to glance back over her shoulder, and when she did he was gone. All that remained were scraps of flame and ruin.

She  broke into a run, flying fast and surefooted out of the ravines and over the dunes. Light as the wind, she fled from him, from the memory of his soft voice and careful touch, her eyes fixed on the stars that would guide her home.

She ran until every time her right heel hit the sand, a blaster-bolt of pain shot up her leg and into her side. Stumbling to a halt, Shmi doubled over, clutching both hands to her ribs.She didn’t know how long she’d been running, but she hurt everywhere, more than she ever had before. Or perhaps it was that she felt all the hurts she had ever experienced in all her short, harsh life, all at once; every slap and kick, every zap from a stun-prod. She felt them all in that moment as a harsh reminder of what she was returning to.

Pressing a hand to her eyes, she felt the moisture of her tears, and realized for the first time that she was crying.

To the left and right of her, a soft dune sea spread out beneath the blue moon shine, the sand a cool silver.

Then a sound, from far off: a distant, mournful ulation. It was so strange, so piercing, and it echoed across the dunes, silencing her. Shmi fell silent, slowly straightening up. She turned her tear-chilled face toward the west and saw something moving beneath the dunes, far _far_ away: a black line, whipping slowly back and forth beneath the surface of the sand. As it moved, entire huge dunes rose and fell, changed position, a new ridgeline formed but it was so far off, the massive creature looked like a little snake. But Shmi knew what it must be, and she marveled at it. They were supposed to be extinct.

The great krayt dragon’s mournful call sounded once more, then the creature dove down beneath the sand. The night went still once more: smooth, blue, and without sound.

At that moment, Shmi felt utterly alone; more alone than she had ever felt in her entire life, more alone than the moment she realize Ama was not breathing, more alone than the times when her friends looked at her sidelong, as if she were a sandstorm on the horizon.

So she opened her arms up toward the sky as she had done when she danced as a little girl. She reached out with all her heart and pulled the stars down until they shimmered in her body, effervescent and wonderful. Once more, she glimpsed that elusive feeling she’d had when she embraced Ahn-kin Dai: _she did not feel alone_.

She held that feeling inside of her, cupped in the pit of her stomach: a little flame to carry with her in the days to come.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The sky over Gardulla’s compound was just beginning to lighten, touched with the palest pink of the first sun’s rise. As she crossed the vaporator yard, she heard the first stirrings of activity from the kitchens. From the east, came the low groan of a menagerie beast calling for its morning meal. From nearer-by, a door kicking open.

“You there!”

Shmi froze.

“Yes you, slave.” It was a prim and proper looking twi’lek man, dressed in fine clothes befitting the inner house staff, likely one of Gardulla’s event coordinators. He looked her up and down and sniffed in dismay. “Uhg. I suppose you’ll do. Follow me.”

Snapping his pale orange fingers impatiently,  he whipped around in a tornado of brightly colored robes, and marched back into the building.

Shmi folded her arms into her sleeves and  followed to do his bidding.

Inside, not far down the Domino Hall, a single pale blue Toydarian hovered with an accompanying waiter-droid. It was an old model droid and clearly belonged to the Toydarian, because it was common knowledge that Gardulla considered using droids as personal servants _tacky._ The Toydarian himself was shabbily dressed, but as the orange twi’lek approach him, he bowed as he would’ve done to any of Gardulla’s favored guests.

“Thank you for your patience, sir,” he said in a deceptively sweet vtone. “Here is your prize!” As he bowed, he swept one arm out toward Shmi in the most graceful way imaginable.

Shmi slowed to a halt, glancing in confusion from the back of the twi’lek’s tailed-head, to the Toydarian.  The guest made a _hrumpp_ noise, pursing his mouthparts, and swiveled over to look at her. The twi’lek bowed out of the way, smiling to himself in a decidedly smug  fashion.

“A human?” the Toydarian growled. “She doesn’t look like much of a prize. Can you repair droids, girl?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you know anything about speeders? Motivator parts? Engines?”

“No, sir.”

He wheezed, his bulbous yellow eyes narrowing in annoyance. “Some prize this is. Gardulla is getting stingy.” He said this to the twi’lek, she realized, not really to her. Then finally, whipping back toward her, his wings flapping so incessantly that they swept the hair back from her face, he leaned in close.

“Well, what can you do then? Come on, what are your merits?”

“I….I can clean and cook, ”she said slowly as the Toydarian began to bob up and down in agitation, tiny movements that were nonetheless distracting.

“And, _and_?”

“I…”

“And?”

“I sometimes did office work for the slave-handler when he was alive.”

“Pah, paperwork! Is this all?”

“He taught me a few languages so that I could better help him.”

He gave a big guffaw. “Did he, now?”

“Yes, sir,” Shmi said. “I can speak Basic, Bocce, Huttees,Toydarian and Rodian. But the slave-handler always said that my Rodian accent is terrible.”

“You speak Toydarian, do you?” He fluttered a circle around her, eyes narrowed.  “Say something, then.” He punctuated his command with a snap of his claws.

“What would you like me to say?” she responded in Toydarian.

He flung his long snout back, laughing from deep in his belly so hard that he rocked a little on the air.  “Alright, alright. I’ll take her,” he said to the twi’lek.

“Many thanks, kind sir.” The twi’lek gave a very low bow, complete with a flourish of his perfectly manicured hand. The Toydarian snorted.

“Come along then.” The waiter-droid lurched after them, one of its wheels softly squeaking as it rolled along at a respectful distance. Shmi followed the Toydarian out into the yard. She was not permitted to return to her shed to gather any personal belongings. There were no farewells. The last she saw of the friends she had known all her life was a brief glimpse of Skotti, watching from the kitchen doorway, her eyes as expressionless as those of the droid.

“What do they call you, eh?” The Toydarian tossed the question back at her through his fluttering wings.

She tucked her hands into her sleeves, her arms folded across her body. The certainty, the calm, came from somewhere deep within her. In her thoughts, she heard the echo of a memory: not just her mother’s voice but Ahn-kin Dai’s as well. She knew that wherever he was in the galaxy, _he_ spoke her name.

“My name is Shmi Skywalker.”


End file.
